Revealed in the Jovian Dust Streams (original) (raw)

The Jovian dust streams are high-speed bursts of submicron-sized particles traveling in the same direction from a source in the Jovian system. Since their discovery in 1992, they have been observed by three spacecraft: Ulysses, Galileo and Cassini. The source of the Jovian dust streams is dust from Io’s volcanoes. The charged and traveling dust stream particles have particular signature s in frequency space and in real space. The frequencytransformed Galileo dust stream measurements show different signatures, varying orbit-to-orbit during Galileo ’s first 29 orbits around Jupiter. Time-frequency analysis demonstrates that Io is a localized source of charged dust particles. Aspects of the particles’ dynamics can be seen in the December 2000 joint Galileo-Cassini dust stream measurements. To match the travel times, the smallest dust particles could have the following range of parameters: radius: 6 nm, density: 1.35–1.75 g/cm , sulfur charging conditions, which produce dust stream spee...